As Bollywood ups its demands on celebrities staying in shape, urban Indian men wake up to a new body approach. Beauty is now the credo, vanity the overriding motive. Everything goes, surgery to steroids to workouts, in the quest for a perfect six pack. Masculinity has turned a corner.

An Indian classical maestro joining chords with a ghazal singer is a rarity. So when sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and ghazal singer Pankaj Udhas joined forces last week to release Yaara, it was a moment for celebration.

"While the Marxists met in Kolkata to deliberate the fate of the UPA regime, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced at Wharton School last week that FDI in retail will soon become a reality. The Reds must finally be seeing red."

Delhi Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee often strays off the beaten track. Known to use the carrot and stick with equal ease while dealing with the members, he stunned MPs last week by suggesting that voters should have the right to recall MPs who do not live up to expectations. Chatterjee voiced this at a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Delhi.

Chennai With the Supreme Court having banned “bandhs”, the DMK-led Government’s call for a bandh on October 1 for the early implementation of the Sethusamudram project was challenged in the Madras High Court by the Opposition AIADMK.

The long arm of the law finally caught up with former MPs Anand Mohan and his wife Lovely. Almost 13 years after the heinous killing of the then Gopalganj (Bihar) district magistrate G. Krishnaiah, a Patna court convicted Mohan and his wife for the murder.

The sheer entertainment generated by the controversy surrounding India’s official entry to the Oscars in the foreign language film category has far outstripped that provided either by Eklavya: The Royal Guard or by the film that has challenged it, Dharm.

Deepak Chopra has written a provocative “reimagining” of what life might really have been like for the young Siddhartha on his journey to becoming the Buddha. This is a racy, insightful, fictionalised account with evocative cinematic images.

Most modern-day writing about Burma tends to be steeped in indignation. Much of this indignation, but it does not always help explain how Burma has become the world’s most enduring military dictatorship.

Lean and muscular is in and Indian men are doing everything to fit into that global mould. Gyms and health food stores have mushroomed, men are willing to pump weights, consume protein shakes, go on diets and try out cosmetic surgery procedures like muscle sculpting, facial rejuvenation, and abdominal etching. Body image appears to be as important to the Indian male as his bank balance.

If you thought Punjab is the powerhouse of hockey alone, think again. For, going by its recent string of triumphs at the national level, the state is on a roll in football, says India Today's Ramesh Vinayak.

The Navratras will soon be here and with that dandiya fever will grip Gujaratis—not just in India, but also overseas, specially those in the UK and US, where the demand for garba and raas music has shot up over the past decade.